Welcome to Off the Console, the hottest new podcast that's all about gaming, tech news, and anything nerdy.
This week we're covering the biggest news, including the big story, is, I think it's Assassin's Creed Shadows, but Hi Tech thinks it's the EU forcing changes with digital
currency and conversions.
So we're gonna see which one ends up being the biggest topic this week.
And then we also have...
NVIDIA's GTC event, Snapdragon coming out with a bunch of new tech including 1x player's version which is a microbot 1x trigger.
It is a transformer in disguise.
And more.
My name is James and I'm also joined with me by co-hosts Gardner and HiTech Lowlife.
How you guys doing?
Great.
I'm doing all right.
doing alright.
mean, it could be worse, I guess.
Well, you know, I didn't like waking up early to go to the DMV, so...
I wake up every early so that I can do this podcast for everyone.
every early, I don't know what I'm saying.
That's every, I wake up early every Saturday.
Yes, thank you.
So Hi Tech, what have you been up to?
Well, you know, I've been playing video games.
I've been playing Well, I was actually juggling three games, but I should probably finish one of them up and get to the other two So I was playing rise of running as I say before
but then I was also sent a key for Atelier Yumiya and That's gonna be that's probably gonna be a really long one and then I was also sent a key for Gale guardians servants of
the deep servants of the dark
I think I shared that demo off on the stream the other day, if you recall.
Anyways, lots of games these days, not a lot of time.
I thought about getting Assassin's Creed Shadows, I really did, but I definitely wouldn't have time for it, so maybe I'll pick it up later when it's on sale or something.
Yeah, we're we'll have we'll have some Something to talk about with Assassin's Creed because I have a couple of opinions on this which are both surprised in a good way in a
bad way So it'll be interesting once we get there
I have been up to a lot this week actually.
just got, my son saw an ad or some person playing Astro Bot VR.
I did not realize it was the original Astro Bot that came out a couple years ago for PlayStation 4 VR.
I...
Astro's toy or like Astro's toolbox or some shit playground
was called.
Playground, think, what it might be what it's called.
But I got that, I'm installing it, but I need to charge my PS4 controller because it requires a PS4 controller, not a PS5 or anything else.
So, getting that all set up, what?
can't use the PS5 controller for that?
No, because it requires the light bar.
So the PS4 controller was designed in such a way that it could be used as a light bar for VR.
So it has a light sensor so the camera can track it and it wants to use that.
So where the PS5 has much better detection for motions and stuff like that, it's much more sensitive than the PS5, but the PS4, they relied on the light sensor.
So.
Hmm.
Also tried out Half-Life 2 RTX, which we'll talk about later too, but let's just say I had a fun time, but there's a lot to uncover in this thing.
And I'm gonna be very gracious because it is a mod.
So take it with what you want, throw away from that what you want.
I also installed Bazite.
It took a lot of work to get installed because, and I always forget this, creating, or especially Windows, creating Windows.
Installation media media USB drives is so difficult off of a Mac but because I reformatted my windows and I just want to reformat it completely I decided not to create an
installation Drive while I still had windows and so I only had my Mac to do it So I kind of screwed myself over for a few hours.
So I spent Saturday last week only doing this until I finally got a dual boot of Windows and bazite and Bazite with Nvidia
still has a lot of work because when it goes to sleep and it wakes up, I get a lot of artifacting, meaning like the screens tearing all over the place.
It is crazy.
So I have to reset the PC every time if it goes to sleep.
Ugh, yeah.
I have a similar...
I have a similar problem.
I've got Ubuntu here on my desktop PC.
I have the proprietary NVIDIA drivers installed, and I will tell you right now, there is no sleep.
You don't put your computer to sleep.
You just shut it off, because if you put it to sleep, it...
there's like a 80 % chance that it just does not recover.
It's ridiculous.
yep, is.
I don't even, I feel like those types of bugs should be the ones they should be able to tackle the easiest.
Like it should be, I don't know.
They've been building software, hardware and software for how long now and they can't get a simple thing right?
Yeah, Nvidia.
Nvidia used to have really good Linux drivers, if I recall correctly.
Yeah, they used to be like...
Yeah, they used to be better than AMD in that regard.
AMD used to be the one that was bad, but then, something happened.
I don't know what happened, but something happened.
They became assholes and that's what happened.
Hmm.
Nvidia Nvidia Nvidia
And so I've it's obviously I don't get as good a performance in a lot of my games in Bazzai as I did with Windows, but I still get like if it does like because it's Nvidia, I
think of his AMD, I think it'd be a little better.
But some games do get really good performance.
But like for 3090, you'd expect to be better.
But I'm fine with that.
I think my only downs like my the only crux of this whole thing is that I can't enter sleep mode and bring it back up easily.
And I have a KVM, so I like to do that a lot.
I like to switch back and forth.
And so that's a little bit of a...
We'll see if I fully switch over to BASA right now until I either get a new AMD GPU or they fix the Nvidia issues.
But I am going to move my computer back and forth between my TV.
One of the reasons I did this so I could play console mode on my TV for fun.
Because I have some co-op games, but that's besides the point.
Hmm.
I did I don't normally buy stuff during the steam sell I did buy silent hill 2 and horizon forbidden west finally I've been waiting to get these for a while and they were pretty
good deal and so I am Excited to play those in the next few weeks.
So I have I did it a lot this week
Mm.
Dude, that sounds like a lot.
You know, did they fix game mode with Nvidia?
Because last I recall, game mode wasn't working with Nvidia drivers.
It works.
It just, if it goes to sleep, it doesn't.
You can boot into game mode, like it's not, it's a separate like session, or are you just opening big picture in Steam from KDE?
I boot into it.
I had to do it felt just like Steam OS, honestly, and I've used Bazzite before with AMD and and you know, with my with my handheld, but I don't know.
It was I was able to get it to work for me just fine.
That being said, if it ends your sleep mode, you're screwed, whether or not it's desktop or game mode.
But once you're in game mode, you exit the desktop and then you can reboot back into game mode.
So and it even says it's game mode and everything not big pictures not like I can click in the big picture mode so You do have to as a note if anyone's doing this with bazai you do
need to go in and if you have like a high refresh rate monitor Especially in game mode.
It does not default to a high refresh rate.
It defaults to like 30 or 60 frames and it's Really laggy if you're used to like a hundred Hertz or higher, so I
you have to go through it.
So if you see that and you're like, well, it's buggy and it's not working, just go into your desktop and change the refresh rate on your monitor.
A little note there.
yeah, Gardner, what have you been up to?
So this week, I spent pretty much all of my time on making Doodlings open source.
And I'm really happy to report that the code is now available under the GPL 3.
And you can go over to blog.gardenerbryant.com and read this pretty long article that I wrote about my experience developing a game.
getting it ready for open source release and how you can download the source code yourself and help out if you're interested.
And, yeah, it's, I had so much fun doing this.
I learned a lot.
Even just, I don't know if you guys know the whole story, but back in 2023, my brothers showed me a prototype they had been working on and they only spent like three weeks on it
or something.
And then,
They were like, we're done with it and you can do whatever you want with it.
So me and my friend Ethan, who was my employee at the time, we were like, dude, let's just make this in Godot.
And we ended up spending almost a year, maybe a little over a year, working on the game, getting it ready for release.
And then it didn't sell at all.
Like it sold so far.
The game has been out for almost a year.
We've sold like 900 copies.
So it has not been particularly successful.
But after we got the game released, I went in and I didn't write a single line of code for the game.
I did all the art and I coordinated with the musicians that I hired and got that stuff working.
But after the game released, Ethan went and got a different job and I ended up taking over development and I learned all about Godot.
I had very little experience with it before and released Doodling's...
Second base which was like a season two essentially and we basically doubled the feature set that was in the game in like two and half months And I was really proud of what I did
but then like it didn't get the eyes that I wanted on it So I ended up being like alright.
Well, you know, I'll just do something with this later eventually I was like hey, it's time.
Let's make this open source and That's what I did for the last like three weeks.
I've just made I've been going into the I went into the code we familiarize myself with it and
polish it up and tried to backport some of the stuff I did for the Android build and bring that into the main mainline game so
really cool that you made a post and everything about that to like your experience in doing that.
I think it would make it an interesting video too if you haven't done that yet.
Yeah, I wanna make a video about it, like, whenever I talk about the game, it never gets any views.
Like, it gets like less than a thousand views when normally I get like 10,000 to 20,000 views on average.
So, I really wanna make that post specifically into a video.
I just don't know if people would watch it.
I think you should.
I think some people would be more curious about the behind the scenes more so than the actual game itself.
Like, you know what saying?
Yeah.
definitely don't make it too technical if you don't feel like you're, know, whoever's watching is going to be, you know, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, but I mean that That's pretty much everything I did this week.
Like yeah, I was just focused on the game So I didn't get to play anything else really I didn't get to do
That feels like my normal week.
I usually get distracted with stuff, which I probably will be very soon.
I've been learning Godot.
I'm not going to switch my game over to Godot anytime soon, but I want to learn it because eventually I do want to maybe even build my next one or maybe I'll port it over.
But I don't think it does quite there for what type of game I like to make.
But I'm I'm impressed with what with their progress.
Me.
Yeah.
If you've seen Mickey 17, the movie that came out that's based on a book,
The one by Bong Joon Ho.
Yeah, that's essentially I watched this like this is like the core of the idea that I had besides printing on a human.
But it was cloning, essentially.
And so every time you die, your clone is stuck in that area.
Or like, you you just see your body and you'll respond at your cloner and then you'll see your bodies.
you persistence will happen with bodies so you can see your dead bodies everywhere.
Some other shenanigans.
And so I'm building a game based off of that in space in a spaceship or colony ship.
So I'm working with someone on it.
And so it is going to either be.
They want to do it as a third person.
I want to do it as a first person.
so we're going to...
And the way that Unreal does it anyways, like I have it set up so you can switch between third and first.
And so we're going to figure that out eventually.
Yeah.
think, I, those are, I recall there was a game that was in development that is actually based on Godot but it looks like a, it tries to look like a modern AAA game.
I think it was called Road to Vostok or something like that.
To Vostok.
it it looks like it is stalker inspired it looks like a stalker game it's I played it at least the demo it's an open-world survival game right
Yeah, so it was being developed in Unity before Unity went and did their...
How long ago was that?
two or three years now.
Yeah, I don't think they've recovered to be honest.
They're still producing a lot of features and it looks promising because they, you know, I believe that CEO got kicked out or stepped down, I don't know, but the EA CEO, like the EA
guy that came from, you know, that came from EA, but I don't care to know his, to remember his name because he did such a shit job and pretty much tanked a very popular indie
cool.
So yeah.
You know, you know that reminds me, have you guys played No More Heroes?
No.
I have not, but it's on my playlist.
I want to play it.
No More Heroes 3 features like a demon, like the main bad guy.
He's based on John Rishitello because Suda 50...
Suda 50...
Suda basically hates him because he like tried to mess with No More Heroes.
It's...
It's crazy.
It's a wild story.
It's like a really whack, like, Japanese game.
But, you know, that's...
John, it's John Riccatello, right?
Like he's the guy that was running Unity and screwed that up and then he was also a part of EA at some point, right?
I think he was like a major leader in EA.
Like I think he was actually like CEO or something, if I'm not mistaken.
Or COO, I don't know.
But he was big in EA, we'll just say that.
Definitely a bad guy.
Well, I am curious about our first topic today, but before we get into that, make sure to subscribe on YouTube if you're there or follow us if you're on any of the podcasting
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You can also follow our RSS feed at podcast.subscribed2.me or you can engage with us on the Fediverse.
at offtheconsoleshow at podcast.subscribed2.me and yeah, like go write us a message there and we're gonna start responding a little soon.
So now let's get into our first topic, which is the EU forces changes in how games deal with virtual currency conversions and real prices.
And this is an interesting topic, something that we've kind of talked about in the past, but
Hi Tech is our man for this explainer.
What's going on here, Hi Tech?
So, do you know how many triple- not even triple-A games, you know how many games force you to buy a currency and then you use that currency to buy, I dunno, rolls for the gacha
or buy skins from Fortnite with your V-Bucks?
You understand that gig, right?
And you understand how none of those items are ever displayed in actual dollar value, they're only displayed in, I dunno, V-Bucks.
points.
Microsoft points or whatever.
Like yeah, this has been happening since the 360 era.
let's do some conversions.
Let's look up a pretty popular skin.
Let's see.
Fortnite skin prices.
Let's say 2,000 V bucks for the most expensive skins.
Now let's look at V bucks conversion rate.
So, one V-Buck is approximately one cent.
So guess it's a little bit more of a fair conversion in the favor of Fortnite.
let's say, for example, Destiny 2.
There was a really egregious example of Destiny 2 where the season pass was 15 bucks.
But there was no direct way to buy $15 worth of silver, I believe the currency was.
You had to buy like a $10 or $20.
The season pass was $15.
So effectively, the season pass was $20 because you had to buy the $20 pack.
And then you'd have 500 left over and then you can buy whatever.
But the EU was trying to combat that, basically.
They're trying to combat this in two particular ways.
First is that they want real prices to be displayed next to the virtual currency.
And second, they want companies to stop doing that thing where you buy a certain amount and then everything in the shop is a little less than that amount, so you have a little
bit left over, so you feel compelled to spend more money to use up that 200 or so points you have left over, otherwise it's just a waste, right?
Those are the two main things I want to target because, let's be honest, kids don't know jack squat about conversion rates.
It's a learning opportunity.
That's what they're offering your kids is a learning opportunity with your money.
I'll be dead before my kid- I'll be dead before I have any kids that learn conversion rates on Fortnite.
A predatory learning opportunity.
Yeah.
at the bright side.
Epic makes Fortnite Academic Edition like Microsoft did with Minecraft years ago.
I don't know, it depends on how it goes.
I just don't like in-game currency.
I used to kind of be okay with this, but more and more I'm just, give us a flat price for everything and we'll buy it because really, anytime you use these points to buy skins or
do anything, it just feels like short-term gains and I think people are getting more more fatigued.
I think the companies are still making a lot of money, but.
More more companies are going after this.
And I don't think it's going to work.
And companies need to start understanding that.
And it's just going to keep on poisoning games.
let's say a favorite franchise of ours becomes a live service game and they inject this in.
This is just going to poison that game and destroy it.
And then the higher ups think, well, this game's dead now.
So we're not going to create anything else.
I feel like that's kind of what's happening in this era now.
is that franchises and IPs are kind of going this route and they're getting the wrong idea.
They're just chasing that money and in short term gains that destroy long term IPs, in my opinion on this.
Yeah.
Like this is a serious question.
Why are they why are they going after this kind of behavior and not gift cards?
the EU?
cards, yeah, mean, gift cards are essentially the same thing.
It's just they pretend that it's real money.
And it's not.
They're at least using like dollar or euro valuation, which is fine.
But the fact is, gift cards are the exact same thing, right?
They only have them in fixed increments.
If you buy something that's less, you have
money left on your gift card that you have to then go spend more money in order to use it like they're they're predatory and they're awful and i don't understand why they're going
after one and not the other
So gift cards, I'd definitely say like, Steam does this right, in my opinion.
You get a $20 gift card, because I like to give them to my kids for stocking stuffers and stuff like that, like Minecraft too.
But with Steam, you can apply all your balance to a game and then pay the rest in with a card.
So you could utilize everything.
I like that.
Minecraft though on the other hand, you cannot do that.
You can't just add more, use all your points and then spend a little bit more in a card to use all those points.
So I think this is what they need to tackle is you cannot have waste and it looks like they're trying to do that.
So gift cards, as long as they equate it to the money, there's an equate, like there essentially looks like they're trying to fix that gift card problem.
The gift card, you get it and then you have leftover.
and you can't really use it, it's kind of a waste and the company ends up winning because of that.
And so hopefully with this, it kind of forces them to start equating things to a price and then hopefully get rid of that waste in points.
lot of the article from Europe is more specifically directed towards the lack of understanding how much something really is.
Because, like, like Fortnite's fair because, you know, Fortnite's more fair because, you know, one VBucket is one cent USD, but plenty of other games have, let's just say, crazier
conversion rates.
you don't, and honestly, without knowing off the top of your head how much, like,
a $10 skew is or whatever, then you're not gonna know what the price is of those items, realistically speaking.
Well, do you remember Microsoft points?
Do you remember how much?
Do you remember the conversion rate?
Like $10 was 800 Microsoft points.
yes, that's right.
And then sixteen hundred was twenty dollars, yeah.
like it was crazy.
And then Microsoft got pissed at harmonics because rock band DLC was like they priced it at such a low price point that you could actually spend your leftover Microsoft points and
you didn't have to add too much more.
And Microsoft got mad at harmonics.
Do you remember that?
We're trying to make them.
idea.
Like, okay, you have a little extra points, you spend it with us.
Like, that seems like an amazing business idea.
You take advantage of that.
this controversy at all.
What did Microsoft do to Harmonix?
Well, they were they were trying to pressure harmonics to raise the prices of rock band DLC Yeah, like that.
You remember how they were forcing do you remember they forced valve to like?
Make left for dead and left for dead 2 expansions paid like they were free on steam and you had to pay for them on Xbox Yeah, dude
I only played that game on Steam, I was free.
They were horrible back then too.
That's...
That's pretty bad.
I'm pretty sure, yeah, basically whoever wins makes the rules, dude.
Like Sony makes the rules by doing, though to be fair though, these, they, yeah.
To be fair though, Sony isn't as bad as Microsoft was at their most powerful, but they're still pretty bad, I would say.
I feel like Valve is winning because they are balancing it enough with what the people want, what players want, where EA, Ubisoft, and a lot of other companies that were at the
top are feeling hard right now because they still don't understand what the players want.
And they're just full of it.
And they did short term games.
And that's another thing, players don't know what shit they want sometimes.
I'm sorry, I am a player.
And I sometimes don't know what I want, they we complain about everything sometimes, and so it does give mixed signals, I think, to companies to to give them a little bit of
That's why you should never appeal to every, like, you shouldn't appeal to everyone because no one's gonna be satisfied if you do that.
You should appeal to your audience and, you know, we're all different.
We all have different tastes in video games.
What gamers really want is unfairly priced and obscurely priced DLC and season passes for Halo infinite and shit, you know, that's what that's what we really want Yeah
you think Monster Hunter Wild's sold really well?
Because it runs like shit on PC.
if you're if you're a content creator, you're making bank off that.
So some gamers want that.
So.
I mean, that kind of kind of goes into the next topic, but it's.
We I don't know like Dead Space is a great example.
I want Dead Space and I want it in a certain way and You don't need to add all this extra fluff you don't need to try to get so many more like they'd be so profitable with that
game if they just Let the like the the dev studio that worked on the remake just keep on making them like they'd be very profitable if they kept it to a very tight-knit Small team
very passionate
and didn't overblow the budget or anything, because it's a cult classic.
And so you have a very strong group that will keep on buying it.
yeah, you know, can't do that.
Got to go for the biggest gamble.
mean, these guys that run these things, you know, they run these gambling essentially loot box, right?
It's almost essentially gambling.
They're caught up in their own gambling.
predicament because they're just trying to go for the biggest bag that they can of gold with every instead of just playing it little safer, but Speaking of Assassin's Creed
shadows It has a major controversy it's had a major controversy since it was launched late or since it was announced and we've talked about this multiple times, but it is finally
out and
It's doing okay as far as reviews go.
I haven't looked at the Metacritic score, but when I saw it a couple days ago, it seemed like it was doing decent.
And the Japanese people have a few things to say about this.
Hi Tech, do you wanna take over?
Yeah, so the Metacredit score sits at an 81, which is generally speaking pretty good.
That's...
Isn't that similar to what Gososhima is?
Let's find out, think Ghost of Shriemon was a little higher.
It's a little higher, but it's similar from my understanding, and so...
So Ghost of Tsushima, Director's Edition, was 87, so it's a fair bit higher.
The user score was a lot higher though for Ghost of Tsushima, with Ghost of Tsushima having 8.3, and Assassin's Creed Shadows having a 5.4, but we don't worry about user
reviews.
half those users haven't played it and I hate people that review bomb stuff that That don't play it at least play it and then say it that you don't like it
So to be fair though, the Japanese government did not mention Assassin's Creed Shadows by name.
But they were concerned about games that would encourage people to go out and about and destroy Japanese shrines and stuff.
These are like religious sites, and at the very least they're cultural sites as well.
And you really, as a good tourist, you really shouldn't be doing that anyways.
or even as a good citizen, to be honest.
Like, you wouldn't go up and deface the Washington Monument.
100 % American would.
So here, we've seen it over the years.
I, okay, I have a little bit less, I'm a little bit more lenient.
If it's like a Confederate statue, I don't care.
They lost, whatever.
But like, if it's a religious thing or whatever, like stop this.
And then on top of that, Americans going over to Japan have been getting more and more in trouble because they're assholes.
And it's mostly these.
Dumbass streamers that go over there and just ruin it for everyone else.
They're starting to kick us out of areas Like just anyone that's Yeah, sorry continue high tech
I could probably pass because I'm not white, but.
Well, good for you.
I wish I could do
Dude if I went to Japan I would be like three feet taller than everybody else from probably not three feet, but like I'm Yeah, I'm six I would not blend in in any way shape
or form I'm pasty white so I like I don't know I've heard that tall people though like in Japan I've heard that they get like a lot of like favorable attention because they're like
they're like, my god a tall person But I don't know
So I think the crux of the whole situation with Assassin's Creed Shadows is the fact that the main character is Yasuke from history, which we should mention was a real historical
figure.
Assassin's Creed has always taken liberty with historical figures like Leonardo da Vinci definitely was not an assassin.
and a flying...
no, he definitely designed one.
It might have been a spaceship.
According to Futurama, it was a spaceship that he designed.
my gosh, that's-
Yeah, no, it's just the whole series is historical fiction and always has been.
It has a thread of history in it that's real mixed in with a lot of not real assassins.
I think my favorite, I think my, I think the craziest like historical deviation that Assassin's Creed has ever done was back in Assassin's Creed 2 where it was revealed in
like some logs that, I think we talked about this last week didn't we?
That Henry Ford, FDR, and Hitler were all in cahoots as Templars.
And I think they were all, I think they were, I think they, and I think World War 2 was like a manufactured like war for some.
bullshit lyrics I don't fucking remember that's all I remember
just wonderful.
It's
quote my favorite adult cartoon, that's just ugly.
But yeah, Assassin's Creed Shadows surprisingly runs kind of okay on the Steam Deck.
From what I've seen.
you're online and can connect and verify your DRM.
I have some videos I'll be playing while we talk about this actually I forgot but the prime minister and also I think it was like a far right or a right leaning politician had
some like is using this to kind of play his game to try to get favor and to get a position in I don't know some some position and politically there but the prime minister did come
out and say some stuff that you mentioned already high tech did we
the quote?
Did you see anywhere in there that talked about Assassin's Creed doing that or?
No, as I mentioned earlier, the game Assassin's Creed Shadows was not mentioned by name.
No, it was not.
And that's what's kind of frustrating about this.
I will say that Ubisoft did release a Day 1 patch where you cannot destroy temples anymore and stuff like that.
they did stuff like that, which at the end of the it's a game.
I do disagree with Japan in some things sometimes where it's a game.
Let people have some liberties.
It's a modder that wants to mod a Japanese game.
Don't put them in jail if they're Japanese.
Like they definitely have some archaic laws on some of those stuff.
And so I don't this isn't a law.
They're just, you know, the prime minister is speaking out, but they're just worried that it's going to.
cause people to go and graffiti things because they like to mimic art sometimes, you know.
I don't, if that's the case, then we need to ban GTA because here in America, you know, there's a lot of potentially mimics, but yeah, exactly.
So I don't know.
It's a hard one.
We have GTA already where you can do so much.
I don't know about defacing, but you can do a lot of interesting things in GTA.
Dude, if GTA had like destruction physics, that'd be kinda cool to be honest.
But it doesn't.
Like you could destroy like light poles, but like, come on dude, that's like basic shit.
If they added that feature though It would have to be persistent across the entire open world and within just like a week of playing you would have destroyed the entire Los
Angeles County so or whatever Yeah, wanted to point out a few things that I'm seeing here The first thing I haven't heard anybody talk about this, but the game is retail like is
retailing for $70
Yeah.
$10 more than a typical AAA game retails for.
And so it's $69.99.
I think that is the standard now.
That's the new standard for PS5 stuff.
Yeah.
Well, we were talking about recently like, grant the thought of five retailing for a hundred dollars.
And, this is just, you know, one step towards that inevitability, right?
Yeah, Sony's been trying to make games $70 since like...
PS5 came out and unfortunately they've been largely successful of that.
Unfortunately.
They've been fairly successful.
definitely for me I Unless it's a game that I must have I don't buy it at that and I buy it on PC because it's usually ten dollars cheaper
Yeah.
This is the first time I've seen, like, I don't pay attention to most AAA games, honestly, so I might be, you old and out of touch, but this is the first time I've ever seen, like,
a AAA game debut at 70 bucks on Steam.
Am I out of touch?
Yeah.
I think Dragon's Dogma also debuted at 7- Quite a few games have debuted at 70 at this point on Steam.
okay.
it's a console game right now, it's coming out that way, unless it's a game, what is it called from?
It takes, like a double A game, it takes two, what's their new game?
You know, it takes two developers.
was the new game that they split fiction?
That one came out at 50.
I think was it 49 or 59?
I can't.
I think it's 49, at least for the PC version, which is there you go.
Like I feel like and it is gotten really good reviews.
It's it's I'm getting I'm seeing nine out of tens at a lot of places.
And so I could see it being a potential contender for a game of the year or at least some awards this year.
So.
I am watching the footage.
I'm gonna level with you.
I don't like how some of the enemies are lot like Tankier like they're like bullet spon- not bullet sponges, but they're basically like sponges especially that guy that they
fought at the end where like He was literally unarmored and he took like a million slashes to kill Maybe he- I think he was like a commander or something like that.
I'm not sure But
It feels like Gozutsushima and I really honestly I'm here for this like for this Assassin's Creed.
I like it, but.
If we look at this footage, this actually looks pretty good.
If this was running on the Steam Deck, and it shows that it's Steam Deck gaming shows that it's running on the Steam Deck fairly decent, like at a fairly consistent FPS.
But if I go and look at some, if we look at a different video, it doesn't look as nice as this.
And this video looks like it compares the Steam Deck.
wait, see if Noah has a video out.
See if Noah from SteamedickHQ has a video.
hold up I do have another video sorry no I have another video already queued up so give me one second sorry I don't yeah from Deckwizard
Deckwizard, that's a good one too.
We should get him on the podcast.
to be a of the podcast.
Let's see here.
No.
Yeah.
Britain, time zones, etc.
Okay, so if you look at it here, it does not look nearly as good.
Mm.
Yeah, looks like it's a fair bit more stuttery.
Well, actually, do we know if they have the Day 1 patch?
If he has the Day 1 patch?
I do not, but this was actually recorded two days ago.
I think the other one was three days ago.
So the other.
on, he just like kicked the shit out of that guy.
Look, go back.
I see that, that's so funny.
This what?
Or did I admit?
Okay.
All right, we just gotta trudge this.
Yep.
yeah.
hold on, no, no, there's one where you like, spongebob- That's awesome!
Nice.
So yeah, Yasuke is very much, much more of a slow, hard-hitter.
And there's two main characters, yeah.
I think it looks cool.
I can tell you right now though, I said that if it played well on the Steam Deck, I'd be buying it day one.
What we're seeing though, this ghosting, this FSR is some of the worst I've probably seen.
Mm-hmm.
That is- that- I gotta say, that does look...
pretty bad.
It's pretty bad.
The fact that there's like, like half of the time, like when he goes to hit someone, it seems like there's almost like a hit stun, like the game pauses, but that's really, it
just looked like stutter to me.
It doesn't look like it's.
I think that's how the game works, it's to give you a second to recover so while you do combos and stuff, I think so.
stutter though.
I don't know.
It's very weird.
but honestly, I'm impressed at how well it does run on the Steam Deck.
I will say this, I think they, if you want to play this on the Steam Deck, and I've watched this video through and I don't see like very inconsistent performance throughout
it, we'll have to, let's see, like I'd have to see end game.
But if you want to play this, like this is doable.
Like if you can play emulated games that look like garbage for, I shouldn't say they look like garbage, but you know, if it's a PlayStation 1 game,
And you can play that?
I feel like you can play this.
Is it a little frustrating?
Yeah, but...
I think the Steam Deck, like the average Steam Deck owner's threshold of terrible performance is really low.
Well, not really high, because Monster Hunter Wilds is one of the most played games on the Steam Deck.
And this definitely looks more playable than...
This definitely looks way more playable than Monster Hunter Wilds does, in terms of performance.
he's getting like 40 frames a second on average right here.
It looks like he might've changed some settings.
Like that's...
might just be the way he's recording it since he's using his fund to record.
yeah, think he's using.
whatever.
Because he's not using a capture card.
ninja, the female ninja now, and that could also be maybe a different, I don't know.
But yeah, I think this is all using FSR 3.1.
Let's see.
Yeah.
Naruto?
How come she's not doing the Naruto run?
What?
if she was doing the Naruto run, I feel like you should be freaking out over that more than Yasuke.
But at the same time, mean, if it's an.
I was going to say, if it's like an unlock, like fun feature, I'm down for that.
I don't know if I could handle it otherwise.
Mm.
Gamma, that's pretty cool.
It looks really fun, but at the $70 price and to this performance, or like how it kind of looks, I think I'm just going to wait.
But I am happy that at least does run and they and I feel like they fulfilled the promise that it is an a Steam Deck compatible game.
with how with the threshold of what people and the Steam Deck community definitely is very this will be a very controversial take, I think, for some people.
But.
Baldur's Gate 3 runs like shit and like especially after the first portion and that is a very like long high like it's been played a lot for a very long time by Steam Deck players
so
fair though, Baldur's Gate 3 is a turn-based game.
Yeah, and this is an action and the action is running at 30 plus frames per second.
So that is doable for an action in my opinion.
It just doesn't look as good.
the FSR obviously is going overtime on the performance.
But it still looks clear enough to where you could still battle people.
It's just like if you were playing a Switch game is what it feels like.
You know what Samurai game doesn't run all that well on the Steam Deck?
Rise of the Ronin.
it doesn't.
No, like, I haven't tried this since the patch, since they released another patch, but when I played it, it did not run that well.
And this looks like it runs better than that, even.
If you want a samurai game that runs really well in the Steam Deck, at least from what I've played, I've only played the first third of the game on the Steam Deck, Ghost of
Tsushima runs really well and looks really good, in my opinion.
Yeah, Gozal's Achievement really good.
I've already played it, but...
I don't know how plays on the PC, though, to be honest, but I've already played it on the PS4.
That's where the FSR does a really good job.
It looks good.
It's not like this where I don't think it has much ghosting and stuff like that because of the rendering.
But yeah, I mean...
Tsushima doesn't have a lot of ghosting?
What even is the point there?
Took you a second to think, it?
Yeah, I was like, I'm not gonna go to that.
You got me.
So, James, if I were you, if you want to pick up this game, I would wait for them to remove the Denuvo DRM, because there's Denuvo in this.
OK, yeah, that.
a history of doing that?
Removing DRM de novo?
Well, my understanding is that Denuvo requires like a recurring license fee, so most games that ship with Denuvo will end up removing it.
At least modern games.
And then it also requires a Ubisoft account.
in order to play and if you read some of the Steam Deck reviews on Steam, most of the negative comments about it are like, I can't play this game when I'm not online and so I'm
gonna return it.
So you have to be online, it's not like what Denuvo usually does where it authenticates like the first time and then you can go offline for like a week or two or something like
that.
I haven't, I have, says Ubisoft Connect made it impossible to launch the game offline.
Should have the Steam Deck tick verified, the Steam Deck verified tick removed if you can't use this single player game on a portable console that, when it can't be played on
the go.
This is where I think the verified is broken partially and it's not for what they're saying.
I think it should be verified and I think it should be a checkbox.
I don't give a fuck if it plays online or offline.
If you're gonna limit the game for me because of that, I'm gonna be upset.
But I do wish it would say verified for always online or something like that and be very descriptive of what you can do with it.
That's the part I like.
I'm almost...
always, unless I'm in the air, and even in the air, usually have Wi-Fi, have access to the internet.
But other people might not, and that's fair.
Like, I don't want to speak for them, but they definitely need to promote that this is an online.
I will say with the DRM, they oftentimes, more and more these days, like you mentioned, Gardner, they will have the license up for a little bit and then remove it eventually.
I'm seeing it more and more, too, that they'll...
do this for the launch, they'll have the DRM to just kind of prevent piracy in the beginning to at least help, right?
And then they remove it after like a month.
So we'll see, they might remove it.
Yeah, yeah.
for like the pre-launch period because you know how content creators...
I'm not saying some content creators do this, but I'm saying it is certainly possible for content creators to leak a game out to like the piracy crew early and then yeah, it
happens a lot.
a lot more than people realize that you'll get leaks because of stupid content creators.
Most don't though.
Most really respect that.
Well yeah, you're not gonna get a second copy of anything if you break all those NDAs and stuff.
Not even NDAs, like the agreements, explicit agreements.
And you're also facilitating piracy, which is illegal.
Should mention that.
Yeah, so I don't know that that is a good note though.
I think once they remove that you'll definitely maybe it will help with the FSR like we can bump the quality from performance to a little bit more quality on the FSR rendering
that could help with that if so like this Honestly, I'm shocked that this runs as well as it does on the Steam Deck
It feels like a console, I'll be honest.
It feels like a console because it's 30, you I wish it was 60, obviously, but console games oftentimes play at 30.
you can't be like with a Steam Deck and we have a topic coming up.
It doesn't play AAA typically that well, especially when it comes out.
So I will give it to Ubisoft.
They actually did achieve that here.
Yeah, I thought it was gonna be verified, then like it runs like crap like Remnant 2.
You guys remember that?
yep.
I did not have a lot of faith that this was going to turn out as well as it did.
So I'm gonna give it to them.
I'm curious what other people's, let us know in the comments if you think otherwise.
I'm curious what other people have to say.
But at the end of the day on this controversial thing, I think the controversy is two things.
I think that the Steambank verified was gonna be a controversy in itself and it ended up not, which I was happy to be proven wrong.
But the controversy that Yesuke shouldn't be in this game or that the Japanese people are upset about it, let developers choose their creative route for this type of thing.
If you're mad about this, you're just doing it for internet points.
Like a lot of creators that are like, far right, will take this as a time to create content, because they need content.
They're always trying to content farm.
Those types of content creators, they need to be outraged about something.
and this is not something that you need to be outraged about.
And if you're outraged about this, I think you need to go touch grass personally.
Yeah, the outrage grift is what it is.
Yep, it's damaging, I think, to our society and to just having fun, I think.
I think there's times to be outraged.
But not over a video game about a historical figure that is historical fiction.
You gotta touch grass.
And I agree with you James, I think like this, it looks like it runs like fairly well for the hardware and like the scope and size of this game.
So I will give it to Ubisoft for optimizing the game for the deck, which did not.
No, no, dude.
fan of Ubisoft over here.
and Unisoften.
Yeah.
shilling for Ubisoft But I'll tell you like I will I will give credit where it's due when it is deserved and it looks like they did the hard work and actually got the game running
on the deck, which is a good thing I do not like their DRM scheme, but You know and the fact that it has to be online all the time that sucks, too But I will say props to them
for getting it to actually work
Alright, so we also have to talk about the fact that this was basically do or die for Ubisoft, let's be honest.
Do you think Assassin's Creed Shadows will save Ubisoft in the end?
I still think they're gonna struggle.
I don't think it was good enough, but we'll see.
We'll see what the sells are.
think avid fans of Assassin's Creed will probably enjoy this game.
It definitely looks like something that's unique, good, that's getting 80s, which I think Assassin's Creed typically gets.
So they'll probably just at home with this, they'll enjoy it.
What I like is to see the trend that I'm hoping other, that all Ubisoft maybe will even see.
I'm hoping that a lot of Steam Deck, maybe I should buy this.
But I will eventually.
just got done spending a lot of money on other games during the sale.
that's honestly secretly my real reason I'm not gonna buy this right now, but maybe in the next month or two I will.
Because I wanna promote games that promote Steam Deck and optimize for it.
I think I want this to be success for that reason alone.
Yeah, I saw that they Said that they had reached 1 million players for Assassin's Creed shadows, which Not that's not sales but players
Apparently an hour ago they just reached 2 million players, not sales.
you go.
There you go.
Hopefully they listen to our advice to not have online, you know, always online for a single player and DRM.
know.
believe you can get Assassin's Creed Shadows through Ubisoft Plus or whatever the service is.
So it's a subscription service so you don't have to pay $70.
on sale right now too, from my understanding, or least it was earlier this week.
So the service, I thought it was on sale.
I heard it was I heard it was, but that was when I was streaming earlier this week.
way they would put that on sale ahead of the highly anticipated Assassin's Creed game.
I think, like you said, do or die kind of thing.
But yeah, no real sales numbers, but I do think having subscriptions is arguably more worth it than having like raw sales because they can just keep recurrently, you know,
charging people.
I mean talk to Microsoft about that.
They claim that their stuff's not doing well.
They could be doing some Hollywood accounting with that, but I don't know.
I'm skeptical.
think it's gonna, it sounds like it's doing really well, but I don't know how much money did they put into this though.
So I'd like to see numbers.
see situation.
I think we'll hear more about it in like next month if the game actually saves Doobie Suffer.
I'm wondering
curious what the breakdown is of those two million.
Like how many people are playing on the Steam Deck?
If it's like 30%, that would be a huge number for Steam Deck sales.
for PC wise or just altogether?
Cause I feel like that would be a little too high for altogether, including console.
I don't know.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, I would...
If it's of PC players, I think it could be up to 30%.
I think...
yeah, I mean, I don't know, man.
It's hard to know for certain.
All we know for certain is that...
Oh wait, hold on for a second.
Yeah
Didn't Steam Deck Gaming play this through Ubisoft Connect and not through Steam?
Like, I thought I saw the title, but maybe I was mistaken.
He played, so if you watched halfway through that video I had, he did GeForce Now.
So if you saw it having 60 frames per second or, oh, 60 frames, he was just doing GeForce Now on the Steam Deck before he was running it locally.
What's wrong with GeForce Now?
There's nothing wrong with it, but.
I'm just saying if he's doing like a performance video, he should maybe be, he shouldn't be using G for us now.
Well, he did both.
He did on the Steam Deck and then he did on GeForce Now.
I don't know.
It might have been a paid...
Look at sponsorship.
Yeah, I think it was a sponsor.
I know that they've reached out to me at one point before, but.
That?
Wait, who?
GeForce Now?
Nvidia?
they reached out to a bunch of people like a year and a half ago, so he might have been a part of that.
Yeah, they gave me like premium access for a month in order to talk about like how they have the app that you can download now for the Steam Deck.
Yeah.
me.
Feels bad, man.
You got left out.
Well, I used it for about two hours or a couple hours and I was like, yeah, cool.
And then I made a little video and I never use it again.
did a little video, or more or less, I mentioned it in a live stream and I didn't use it after that.
Because I don't do online stuff like that very much.
I like the idea and I like that it's an option.
I'm just a local man.
I like to do it locally.
I don't like to stream it from a server.
same.
if you streamed it from your own server?
That I'm trying to set up and Bazlight actually comes with Moonlight or whatever it's called, built in, so Sunshine.
Didn't you use Moonlight to stream?
I don't, I, it is.
so sunshine is how you send it moonlights how you receive it?
I tried to set it up once on my windows and it did not work out very well at all.
But Bazite has it built in and so one day I'm gonna have that all set up.
that's another thing.
I've been researching home labs.
I think Gardner's gotten me into this whole I wanna build my own home lab now.
Dude, Home Labs are sick.
I have a homelab too.
I don't have one that's capable of streaming games yet.
As much as I'd like to have one of those.
That might be what I do with my 39.
I'm gonna have a lot of fun this year, I think.
Yeah, I've been thinking about like taking my desktop here with 128 gigs of RAM and turning this into my server and then using like the minis form AI X1 that I have and using
that as my primary thing and then like remote desktopping into the server and doing video editing if I need to on that or rendering or playing games or whatever.
Yeah, yeah.
does.
Yeah.
Well, Linus has a couple different things that he does, but the biggest thing that he does is he has his desktop rack mounted in his server rack, and he remote...
It's not a remote desktop.
It's like a KVM, but it's remote.
Yeah, like, I think he just has, I think, no, he uses fiber optics for like the wiring in his house to get better ranges.
it's USB over fiber optic though.
It's insane what his setup is.
and not to-
it's a $10,000 setup.
It's ridiculous.
No, I'm pretty sure it's more than $10,000.
Like, the whole rack is probably hundreds of thousands.
yeah yeah yeah, I'm saying just the USB of fiber optic setup is 10,000.
Yeah, it's crazy.
I saw his video about that.
I would never.
Unless you can afford it.
have ethernet in the house, so I'm just gonna use ethernet to do some of my...
Well, yeah.
10 gig ethernet in my house.
Like I have two 10 gigabit switches, because I bought one and then I ended up needing more.
So I bought a second one and I have two, like two and a half gig switches.
So I've got like a whole bunch of like high speed internet or high speed networking here.
a NAS, I was sent to a NAS once, it's an all SSD NAS.
And I also have a rack mount server that I got from some office.
And it's on a filing cabinet, as you recall.
And it's the-
standard height like it's like six and a half feet tall and I have a NAS I have a Firewall a network a bunch of switches and Two like rack mounted PCs and they're all doing
different stuff.
It's pretty neat
Yeah, I have the world's worst...
...helm lab set up, physically speaking.
used to have a NAS and a bunch of other stuff kind of all connected.
I had like a makeshift and I didn't like it.
It just kind of fell apart and I haven't built it up since.
But I am going to probably do like a more, I think this year is kind of the portable.
So I'm going to be doing the smaller type.
It's not going to be too crazy, but I'm going to try to fit as much as I can into that thing.
So it's going to be fun.
I want to do as much as I can on that thing.
Mm-hmm.
Speaking of hardware and all this fun stuff that it's it's good to nerd out about this stuff again.
Nvidia GTC event happened, right?
And they discussed next generation GPUs and hardware.
And yeah, high tech.
So there are some interesting things that took place there first and foremost.
Nvidia was selling their 5080 and 5090s out of a food truck right outside of the venue.
At MSRP, I should mention.
I mean that was nice of them, I guess.
At least they weren't, you know.
Yeah, but to go to the event you had to like pay thousands of dollars anyways, so like it's not really...
I mean, it certainly helps with like software developers getting their hands on these GPUs, because I'm sure they're having trouble too.
anyways though.
is, NVIDIA's all sorts of screwed up right now with their priorities, but whatever.
That is.
aside from that little tidbit though, announced a couple of professional GPUs.
Lots of them.
black one.
Let's see.
I think one of them was RTX Pro 6000.
Or actually, is that what it's called?
Yeah, RTX Pro 6000.
So I haven't really done ray tracing in game development much.
Like, do even need an RTX for doing actual development?
You don't only need it when you're actually rendering.
So is that for rendering maybe movies and stuff that uses RTX maybe?
I don't know.
know.
But it's slightly more powerful than...
It's basically like a Titan class card.
It's basically like the 5090 with like triple the VRAM.
And it's a little more...
Let's just say a little more performant.
5 or 10 % I think.
But it does have a shit load of VRAM.
I remember when people used to buy like these types of cards, like professional cards to play games on.
It's just some of them got screwed over because they're not tuned.
The drivers aren't tuned for games.
They're tuned for professional work.
So it's always kind of funny.
You don't hear about it as much, but.
96 gigs of VRAM sounds awesome.
I, but you would never use that.
Obviously it'd be for AI tasks and for professionals.
Well, with these professional cards, what you could do for gaming is put it in a server and split it and do virtualized GPUs.
True, true, which is probably what some of these use.
Maybe that's what that RTX is for us.
No, I think they virtualize actual 5080s, 5090s and stuff like that with GeForce now, right?
I think it's individualistic cards.
No?
You think, okay.
well, unless they have their own drivers, like internally that they don't release, it's not possible to like partition a GPU like a commercial, like a commercial grade GPU.
Yeah, but to be fair though, this isn't video we're talking about and it's their, it's all of their stuff so I'm sure they do have that fabled mythical driver that they just don't
have public.
I mean, they probably do.
And to be fair, it actually is possible to partition a GPU, but Nvidia artificially limits the capacity to do that.
I should make that clear.
Because AMD doesn't care.
Like, their commercial graphics cards, if you have the right motherboard, you can actually set up a partition GPU across multiple VMs, and it just works.
I've done it before, it's actually a lot of fun.
just one GPU for multiple computers.
That's cool.
I've been wanting to do like a four-on-one like Linus did a few years ago, a four-on-one network PC.
Yes.
But I was gonna get four individual graphics cards, know, because motherboards will support that.
Some will, especially server.
think that's what Linus did.
when he initially did it, he had four different like, GPs.
I think they were like the 270X Fury or something like that.
There were AMD cards for sure.
Yeah, you just need a motherboard that has the correct IOMMU groups and then you can pass through different PCI slots essentially to different virtual machines.
I had it all researched a few years ago, I almost did it.
When I become rich one day, I will be doing that.
But right now, it is not, I'll work on my home lab.
So on top of this new GPU, they also announced the roadmap for future GPUs.
See, Nvidia feature, GPU roadmap.
yeah, there's a lot.
Let's just say they're going to quote unquote make a lot of quote unquote GPUs, quote unquote.
Hahaha!
and they're gonna quote unquote sell them.
That's like pretty much what they said.
We're making stuff.
sell them and then they're gonna quote unquote sell them for quote unquote MSRP quote unquote.
And, man, it's gonna suck.
We are in the darkest timeline with everything going on in the world, including this.
Can't even get a GPU these days.
Like, you can't get a GPU.
did.
I was hoping AMD would save the day, but you know how last week I was out of town trying to get a GPU?
I could not secure one.
I could not find one on sale.
Like, I could not find one that was available at all.
Not even the ones that are like over MSRP, too.
Those are all sold out, too.
I, with AMD, I feel like they probably did get ready to sell a lot and they, and people wanted it.
There's a demand that people want GPUs and so they sold them.
I'm not going to count out AMD quite yet just because they didn't have, you know, millions of cards available.
I think they prepared, but I don't think they were ready for how many.
So until I'm proven wrong on that, that's just how I'm gonna do it.
Nvidia, I know artificially limits the supply.
like in the sense of we have evidence from the past, like strong evidence of Nvidia doing that and prioritizing other things too, that it's a little shady with like the consumer
grade graphics cards to a point where it's...
I don't trust Nvidia right now to release a card that's gonna be available anytime soon.
Fuckin' Nvidia, man.
I'm not going to buy into it anymore.
I'm sick of it.
I'm sick of this artificial supply shortage that they're creating.
Nvidia is truly doing their best to kill PC gaming.
Let's just say that.
or their brand, like they've also lost a lot of, I believe they're dropping too, but that's partially because of the AI bubble kind of going up and down and potentially
popping.
stop playing games, just make a bunch of cards.
Even if it's like 50, I just want a 50 70 TI.
Maybe, I mean, I think I'm gonna try to go for an AMD obviously, but like if I was gonna get an Nvidia, I'd just be getting a 50 70 TI.
I don't want anything too...
Too high, partially because they're just heaters at that point and they just wreck my room's comfort level.
go down again, to be honest.
Well yeah, we actually get stock as well.
I'd the prices aren't even the what bothers me as much as the it's not even available.
They charge so much and it's not even available.
At least choose one.
Dude, people will just buy anything.
Speaking of-
I mean, but they're losing money.
They're playing this stupid game and don't really understand.
I think they don't, I don't know.
They're trying to play the the demand and supply kind of game and I just don't think it's, I think they're losing money.
just letting scalpers buy all the GPUs at once too.
That's also like equally bad too.
how the Steam Deck was initially limited?
like you had to wait in a queue.
You know how Valve did the bare minimum to prevent scalpers from getting them?
Bare minimum?
I don't know if I'd say bare minimum.
I think they did a lot.
well, it's like, you need a steam account that's old enough to like, old enough to not, prove that you didn't just make a steam account to buy like a million steam decks.
Yeah, and Val, that's, I would say that's like, okay, so maybe not the bare minimum, but it's not, it's not, it's not a hard thing to do.
It just doesn't seem like a hard thing to do.
Well, Valve had control of the whole process.
They did not sell at retail.
They sold it through their client and they had control over the whole process.
Nvidia does not necessarily have control of that whole process, but they could make their retailers maybe have to do it that way.
mean, yeah, think Nvidia has the power to do that.
Yeah, but it's more complicated once you include other companies.
Yeah, it just gets more complicated when you have other parties involved in that decision.
Definitely needs to go that way.
I think Switch, like Nintendo, think is gonna be forcing that more, because I think Switch really doesn't want scalpers to have it.
But they also care more about the whole process, so we'll see what Switch 2.
how that works with scalping.
and also on top of new GPUs, Nvidia unveiled their workstation, like the new tiny workstations they've been working on.
Some of them are big, some are tiny, but it has an Nvidia CPU in it and it's made explicitly for AI.
Hmm.
Okay.
Yeah, AI, it's interesting to see where Nvidia's going with all this AI stuff, and I'm really curious to see price to performance compared to AMD, Mac, and some of these other
AI chip steps coming out, because I really want my best bang for my buck to build my home AI pet, that's gonna be included in
my lab so it's another reason i'm building it so that i have a home for it's like a dog house for my ai
do you guys have anything else to say on this Nvidia thing or should we go on to the Snapdragon?
I don't have much else to say about Nvidia.
The Snapdragon G series is ramping up.
This is a brand new series of Snapdragon G CPUs meant to go into various handheld devices.
Of note is the most powerful of these, the Snapdragon G3 Gen 3.
Damn, just freaking simplify this, which will be in the IONEO Pocket S2, the IONEO gaming pad and 1X player, 1X sugar.
I think it's time to talk about the state of ARM devices is what Hitech wants to do.
God, 1x player, 1x sugar, yikes.
so let me just say, the Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 is a terrible name, because I would have expected G stood for Gen.
So if they just called it the Snapdragon G3, then that would have been a pretty decent name.
But tech companies cannot.
three of the generation three of this chip.
It means there's six generations total.
the Snap?
it the Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 by 3.
Dude, it's USB all over again, Snapdragon G3 Gen 3.
What a terrible name.
And that's not the only one they announced, too.
There were a couple of other ones, too.
There's like the,
see what they got.
They have the G2 Gen 2 and the G1 Gen 2?
What?
Hold on.
Hold on, so G doesn't stand for generation.
It's some other bullcrap.
No, doesn't.
Congratulations.
Like this is on them.
This is so annoying.
So yeah, Qualcomm Snapdragon G series specifications.
Yeah.
Gen three, Gen three, or G three, Gen three.
damn.
G one, Gen one.
They have a comparison chart right here that we're sharing if you're watching.
So is this the reason that Epic brought Fortnite and whatever to Windows 11 for ARM?
I'm not saying that's the reason, but I'm saying maybe.
Maybe.
But these are all Android devices, the devices we all mention, I believe.
Yeah, I he well.
even less useful.
Yeah, it does have the potential to, I know Windows is gearing up more and more for ARM again.
I know they had a big push a while ago, but it'll be interesting to see where these...
where these devices lie and where these G these these Qualcomm Snapdragon's lie.
Yeah, use an Adreno.
Yeah, it's another interesting thing is like I don't know how performant these actually are.
So like when I see this type of thing, I just don't know how to gauge it.
Like I see Snapdragon comes out.
I'm like, great.
That's the CPU.
I don't care about the CPU as much as I care about the GPU for gaming performance for me right now.
don't know how it is on, like the arm part is really as important for like power.
But beyond that, I'm like, how good are these devices gonna be?
Devices.
in the field like Retro Game Core.
Mm.
through, we should ask him sometime.
Yes.
But in the meantime though, I see IAneo now has two devices with this and I just want to say IAneo, they are best known for making a bunch of SKUs and then like releasing a new
one while yours still has yet to be shipped.
They've been dropping the ball in that regard.
What happened IAneo?
Where are my SKUs?
They're not making as many.
Where are my skis, Ioneo?
You've really fallen.
You're washed, as the kids would say.
washed.
I don't know.
All I know is the 1x sugar is unique and I do want it like I and Neil has been making unique devices too and I actually respect them for that meaning they push at least some
creativity.
just wish they would do it one generation at a time not 20 in one generation but the 1x sugar like 1x player tends to do a little bit I really don't like their name either but
I'll go ahead and let's look at that for a second.
the parent company is called OneNetbook and then they like made one X player and then they made Aokzui as well, if I'm not mistaken?
I don't know, it's a confusing mess of a company name.
I don't know, but we'll, we'll, I'm gonna turn the.
Yeah, the audio does not matter in this case.
No it doesn't and it will flag us.
Okay.
If we...
So...
It looks like a handheld.
But my god, it flips up and it's something else entirely.
a 3DS.
I don't know what the heck is going on with this device to be honest.
It's a transformer.
It is bizarre, but I will say this.
I don't know how it's gonna hold or how it's gonna play or whatever.
I wanna hold off until I can see it in someone's hands or whatever.
It looks promising and I actually, from like a...
Look at that!
Who would play- Dude, that is crazy!
I would play that.
But how does that even work?
Is this just two of them?
I think there's just two of them.
They're just kind of showcasing how maybe it could work.
do the controllers, can the controller straight up detest?
That'd be kind of cool.
Like in Joy-Con.
that's the thing.
I don't think they can, but I'm gonna say at least it's innovative.
I don't know if it's gonna do well, partially because it's also Snapdragon, or like it's, you know, it's armed.
probably going be super expensive too.
mean, making something like this cannot be cheap.
Hmm.
Yeah
So also one more thing too, I have one more question too I should ask.
sorry.
Can you hear that?
Can you hold that in the background?
a little bit, but we're good.
So, my first question is, how much is it gonna be?
I think that's gonna be the main deciding factor.
If it's like over a thousand dollars for this, then it's not gonna sell.
I don't think.
Second.
Because it's a mobile processor and a bunch of other things, sorry, I'm kind of scrolling around just to see if I could find anything on the price, but I don't know.
Like I personally, I do agree like this is gonna be expensive.
But how expensive and how well will this play 3DS games or can I watch something while I play?
I think it's an Android device.
So I don't know.
Yeah, I know.
Well, it is an Android device.
It's Android gaming device.
and it.
What?
There is no D-pad.
It's the stupid Nintendo Switch button thing that they have.
And I loathe the Switch.
I hate the Joy-Cons for that reason.
It is the worst thing Nintendo has ever done.
I understand what they did it for.
I really do.
And I guess it can be used for games like Mario Party.
Why?
Why did they do it here?
Well, I think it's supposed to be like, because I'm not apologizing for this.
I think it's dumb, too.
But you're supposed to be able to like flip the Joy-Cons, if you call them that, up and then rotate the whole device and be able to play it upside down.
Because if you look at it, the way like that, three by two screen is like you can flip that up and then you can flip the controllers around and then you flip it and you hold it
like it's a 3DS.
Ugh.
So I think that's what they're doing.
It's stupid, but you
I know man, it's all a of me.
It was versatile.
even says right here, play 3DS style games with dual screen setup or enjoy classic handheld mode for Android and emulated titles.
One X Sugar lets you switch controllers and transform seamlessly for any game.
The concept is cool.
I don't know, like in the sense of, I like where they're going.
I actually, like the design of it.
I don't, but the problem is design does not mean equal comfort or playability.
I like how unique it is, personally, but...
thick too.
Yeah, I do-
of like the design.
I understand that.
Yeah, like it kind of has to be, I don't want it to be too thin or else it's just going to not be comfortable.
I'm just curious what this is actually.
I wanted to share this because this is by far the most bizarre handheld I've seen in a while.
And so.
I want to check it out.
I think it should get a hold of one netbook.
If you're watching, you know who to contact, us three.
They might.
Because of that, I'm not going to comment.
But yeah, they might.
If you can open up the bottom left image there, like full screen, you have to use your dev tools to find the link.
It's really stupid.
But what is going on on the back here?
I like this one right here, the white one.
Yeah, like, because it looks like there's two sets of, I don't even know.
It looks like there's inputs or is that a speaker?
I don't get it.
It's very strange.
is a weird...
Oh.
So that's definitely the back.
I only see one set of like...
They have a fan.
Yeah.
I only see one set of controls, like on the outer control area, because you can see the bumpers and triggers.
So I don't think...
curious what that thing on the to the left of the screen like with that's got a light on it and it's kind of raised.
I don't know what that would be.
I think that's just the aesthetic.
yeah, it might be an indicator light or something.
Or what the black, I know this is a fan, but what's this black thing?
Yeah, I think that that's a speaker.
It kind of looks like one.
Or is this a speaker?
no, these are intake vents.
Okay, the top ones that look like they're intake vents, or they're outtake maybe.
Intake, out.
I don't know what that black thing is though.
It could be a speaker or a bass.
Yeah, that's very strange.
But it'd be weird because you'd have mono.
Why would you want mono?
You'd want stereo.
You want two matching.
And if you look at the other one, the like, so we're looking at the bottom left one.
If you look at the top right one, that's what the the screen flipped over and the two controllers flipped up.
It's interesting.
It is very strange.
It's a weird device for sure.
Yeah.
here for it.
I love seeing anomalies in this type of area, but I'm wondering if it's going to be successful.
I don't know for certain, but I certainly do want to try it out.
Yeah.
Yeah, same.
I want to at least fill it and play with it.
Honestly, I want to, maybe that's what it is.
I just want to like use it as a fidget spinner.
I'd honestly just play with it, but not actually turn it on.
funny.
That would be so funny if he did that.
There's a good chance like if it goes on discount, I might do it just so I can fidget with.
It's hitting that part of the brain that I just like to fidget with stuff.
Moving on.
The Smash Bros and Kirby creator mess...
I don't even know.
Masahiro Sakurai.
Thank you, encourages Japanese devs to pursue the sorts of games that Japanese gamers love and that they need to be pressured into making games appeal worldwide.
May not, need not be, yes, thank you.
So, what is this about?
So he was awarded the Art and Courage Prize from the Japanese government, this agency of cultural affairs.
And here's what Katsakura had to say, He goes on to explain the success of various Japanese games in the US market kicked off a trend of
making Americanized works, or Sakurai Nets.
You could say that there was a culture of following de facto standards by de facto standards.
is referring to practices that get adopted as widespread norms by an industry as an outcome of market competition.
However, Sakurai feels that people who love Japanese games aren't looking for this filtered experience, but rather, end quote he says, but rather, I think that they seek the
uniqueness and fun of Japanese games.
Hence the opinion that there's no need for Japanese developers to consciously adapt their works for audiences in the US or elsewhere.
He also says, in other words, think the ideal would be to make games the way you like, as those who agree with you will enjoy them.
So, a lot of people on the internet have been thinking of this as like, stop making games that are like, woke or whatever, but then that's not really the case.
It's just, if you're a Japanese developer and you're making games the way you want them, you should feel free to make games, continue to make games the way you like them, instead
of having to cater towards, you know...
Worldwide translate you may not necessarily like you know I'm
Yeah, if you want to make a big busted main character chick or whatever, go for it.
I don't care as long as you don't break any laws or go too weird, I guess.
Like weird as in like Lolita kind of thing.
Beyond that though, go for it.
make it as woke or anti woke as you want, but like whatever.
think that's crux of it.
Make games that you want to make.
Don't feel pressured by what's popular.
Yeah.
or do rage braid on it saying that all games are bad nowadays because you have to deal with someone that looks like a female, not a doctored up whatever female, you know, it's
like the Horizon Zero Donk kind of thing.
Mm-hmm.
Alright, that was a fun little topic.
Yeah, no, I very much agree with that.
But we should probably group these a little different next time because we're getting back into the Steam Deck world.
New AA or geez, I can't read it today.
AAA games too big for Deck.
So there's a digital foundry.
Do you want us to like watch it with audio on or do you want to just comment and I'll have it running in the pack?
I think we all get the gist of what Digital Foundry is saying though, to be honest.
I don't know if we need to watch the video, but it's up to you, James.
I'm going to play it, but we're not going to like, but as background for fun.
Okay.
Just go out of high tech.
So, lots of AAA games have been coming out and they simply do not run that well.
I've experienced one of them, Rise of the Ronin.
It does not run that well on Steam Deck.
I've also experienced Dragon's Dogma 2 and honestly that was a...
I had really good time with that game.
I know a lot of people had issues with like the microtransactions or whatever but I had lot of fun with that.
But the one thing that was really disappointing was that the game did not run that well on Steam Deck.
In fact,
I would go as far as to say it ran terribly on Steam Deck.
And then you have games like Assassin's Creed Shadows, where sometimes it actually runs pretty well.
Surprisingly enough.
I was genuinely surprised.
So we're getting to a point where lot of AAA games are starting to run terribly on the Steam...
Oh, like Blacksmith Wukong.
That's Dragon's Ogmah 2 right there.
Look, it runs terribly.
and looks terrible.
Like some of these games look so bad.
I'm like PlayStation 2 and 3 games are going to look better and perform better.
Dude, it's so blurry too.
I mean, that's my thing too.
Yeah.
What?
look, Indie Game.
Horizon...
Horizon Lego Game.
I can't believe they made a Horizon Lego Game.
not an indie game.
yeah, they make legal games for everything.
This is something.
My my my wife was going to really like this.
I'm going to pick it up for a while at one point.
She watched me play Horizon Zero Dawn, but I think she likes the Lego games more so.
Okay, like, I feel like Horizon isn't like popular enough to warrant a Lego game.
Maybe I'm just being the leadest.
Like I can see like Lego Batman.
Like Lego Batman, certainly, Lego Lego Star Wars.
But Lego Horizon.
lot.
I mean, this looks fun to me.
This looks like more fun than actual Horizon.
what I was gonna say.
No, it looks fun.
But yeah, there.
This I agree with.
I actually think this works really well.
I don't agree with the other Horizon like games that they're going with.
Hold on, we're showing her face, like, side by side.
There, pause it.
Look, look at how blurry the Steam Deck- I get it, look, look, look.
It's a PS5, it's not a fair comparison, but look how much blurrier it is.
And, I mean, the game runs pretty well on Steam Deck, so obviously it must be worth it, right?
Well, it looks like it runs pretty well, at least.
But you have FSR Shimmer, it's the one thing I-
I cannot stand FSR Shimmer.
It's terrible.
I can get over it depending what type of game, but that is pretty bad.
I think games should go back to just giving us dynamic resolution options.
Just give us that instead of trying to upscale everything.
I think games look better with dynamic resolution than they do with FSR.
I Here's the deal.
Like, for the most part, I don't like FSR.
Like, I turn it off and I just run a game at like a lower frame rate and I don't scale it up or at a lower resolution and I don't scale it.
Like, don't understand.
I don't I don't I like the like just the kind of bilinear normal scaling that that I don't think it adds more detail if you use FSR.
It just looks worse.
But with the Steam Deck specifically, what the the frame that we paused on like
You know, I generally don't pay attention to little details like that if it's an action game and I'm not gonna be like comparing one to one between the PlayStation 5 and the
Steam Deck.
So that kind of stuff doesn't really bother me.
What bothers me is when a game runs at lower than like 30 FPS.
Actually, generally I feel like 40 is kind of like the bare minimum for me when I'm playing a game.
Especially if it's an action game and it has to be like rock solid and that's where I take real exception.
Is like when the when game developers don't put in the work to actually optimize the game for the deck like and and that happens way too often right like I Don't know.
mean at least here like we're watching Digital Foundry play is that Ragnarok God of War Ragnarok and It looks like it's running at 40 FPS ish Yeah, and that's like
60ish.
metaphor and these types of games and their engine already runs really well with the Steam Deck typically, but wait, well.
dips in towns.
mean, I'm not that surprised.
Look, it's dipping right now.
Or maybe...
Yeah, it's, well, so it is a complex issue, honestly.
They can optimize it for consoles, and so I know that they could optimize it for the Steam Deck.
They need to, how many objects you have on screen or in the world that you're tracking and have functions or whatever it is running on those events, that is, will affect the
performance, and they need to do optimizations for that.
And it's not as easy as scaling the textures.
There's a lot more that goes into this.
Yeah.
one of the things that I have read about performance is that modern rendering pipelines need if if if a game has triangles that are rendered in a scene that are smaller than a
pixel, that is what is actually going to cause the most performance degradation and.
in a game that's running at 720p, that's actually going to be more likely to happen.
So what, I think the next Steam Deck might actually benefit from having a higher resolution simply so that like triangles being rendered are less likely to be smaller than
one pixel on the screen.
Even if, even if like you're gonna run most of your games at like 720p.
Well, that's the problem.
it's based on the resolution that you're running at.
So if you're running a game at 900p, if you're rendering it, then you're going to still have those issues.
it's going to be interesting because I trust Valve to actually make the right call on this too.
Like, perhaps having the Steam Deck.
stay at 700 or 800p or whatever would make the most sense to them.
But I don't know, I just want to see more like, wow, that looks terrible.
What is that?
What is this game?
Is this Veilguard?
I did not pay attention, I'm sorry.
This is, that's Space Marine, yeah.
So, I personally think the Steam Deck would benefit greatly from a bump up to like 1080 or 1200p depending on their ratio, screen ratio.
Personally, I like it.
I have a device that I've used devices that have like a seven to eight inch screen that have that resolution.
I like it, but it's not gonna be better for everyone.
And I upscale to it and it looks better in my opinion.
But what you're saying Gardner, it sounds interesting.
I'm curious if Valve would account for that.
I would imagine so, mean, Valve has like a massive crack team of engineers.
That is bad tearing.
Did they disable, like, did they enable tearing?
Sounds like they, seems like they might have.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's a complex issue and honestly, think game devs should spend more time.
Like they should treat the Steam Deck like it's a console because it needs special attention.
Well, and optimizing for the Steam Deck will help a lot of other devices that are low performance or like low.
What is it?
Lower performance.
Yeah, essentially they they don't have as high of APUs or GPUs or whatever.
I think like targeting the Steam Deck would help like console games run better because, you know, console games don't, I'm not going to say they run terribly.
I'm not going to sit here and say that Dragon's Argument 2 does not run better on a PS5 than it does on like a lot of PCs, but I feel like it would help that out as well.
So.
You're right, and I think one thing that's really important is like it helps low-end PC games, PCs run more games at better frame rates.
And if you're targeting broader hardware support, then that means you're gonna have more customers, right?
So, yep.
Yeah, especially in this era where people can't pick up GPUs at all.
mean, yeah, you're have a hard time selling PC games if no one can get a GPU that can play games.
But the Steam Deck, the Steam Deck, you can pick that up right now.
I personally think this is a tooling issue, the more I think about this.
think this is a tooling issue, I think Godot, Unity, and Unreal would do really well if they could ship some type of presets for testing of consoles, Steam Deck, Mac OS even,
like that target performance levels.
I think that could help.
I don't know fully, like obviously that's a complicated tool, but...
I think tooling is where you would solve this and recommendations through the tooling.
I can see someone...
sorry, go ahead.
go ahead.
I was gonna say there's like really good debugging tools that Valve offers for the Steam Deck.
I don't know if you guys have ever used that stuff, but like you can, if you enable the developer menu in the Steam Deck, you can go in there and connect remotely and debug
remotely from your PC.
It's really, really cool.
Which is nice, but I want a step before that because I don't expect these people, until they realize how many people are buying Steam decks and buying their game on Steam deck to
go the extra step.
I want to be built in partially to these as a tool for the engine.
As the first step.
Then when you're finalizing and baking it to test it on the Steam deck and use those debugging tools, I'm talking about even before that to just
even when you're running the engine, and if you've ever used Unreal or Godot and all these, I actually don't know about Godot, but I think Unity has this where they'll have
sometimes recommendations or they'll do certain tips for the developer.
Maybe I'm just thinking of Unreal, but it'd be nice while you're working on stuff like, there's a lot of objects, a lot of events going on.
You should probably check that out.
I could see someone, if like the main Godot team doesn't go about doing it, I could see someone making a Steam Deck specific fork of Godot, like made to help with like Steam Deck
development.
could see.
think that would need to be done.
I think that would be the wrong way to do it.
think a tool, yeah.
Yeah, he did get featured on this, I forgot.
Yeah, it's a tool.
They don't need to fork it, they just need to make a tool to support it.
That's all they need to do.
I think forking it would be the wrong way to go.
and
know if this exists already, like they have, when I was developing the Android build of Doodlings, like you can deploy a test build.
very quickly just by clicking the little Android button and having your phone in debug mode and plugged in.
And it would be great if they had that for not just the Steam Deck but for other handhelds too.
I think the Steam Deck would be able to support that the best because it has built in debugging and deployment stuff.
So that would be cool to see for sure.
Yep.
I definitely think that they could go and especially if they're using telemetry and this is where telemetry is really nice.
And I know it's a little privacy wise and all that, but telemetry, if all the of these are all the major engines collected enough telemetry on how games ran based on the device it's
running on and how many events and what's going on, could actually get like, we're getting really deep into solving this.
Mm.
my fault, but we have a lot of work that needs to be done and there's a tool that I think people could create that could make a lot of money, that's what I'm saying.
So anyone that's really savvy at that type of thing and has the time, I'd make a tool that can help with developing Steam Deck and other games.
And now we're getting into another video.
So I will say this.
Alright, this is a lot of stick.
Okay, I it.
he's reading his story.
gosh.
Alright, so I will say a lot of people argue that the Steam Deck was never made for AAA games, but like if you look at all the prior marketing of the Steam Deck, like before it
was released, and even like during its heyday, you see they were primarily marketing that playing like AAA games.
And they were still fairly new games when the deck came out.
Like Jedi Fallen Order, Control, Control was a big one too.
And I guess Doom Eternal was a little older at this point, but like, come on dude, they were marketing AAA games.
And they maybe marketed like maybe one or two like indie games like Hades and Hollow Knight, I think.
I don't know.
So I don't think every game, every AAA game needs to play on the Steam Deck, but I think most should be able to.
And this just never, like even when the Steam Deck came out, not every AAA game played on it.
Do you think the Steam Deck 2 should be able to play every AAA game that has come out before the Steam Deck 2 came out?
Yes.
Well, okay, that's a little bit of a trap because there's some games that just aren't optimized at all.
So every big AAA game or every game that is like decent, yes, I think it should.
Yeah, I think...
Yeah.
I think here's the thing that I'll say is even after Steam Deck 2 comes out, I'm still going to be able to enjoy playing games on my original Steam Deck because it will be for
years to come, the original Steam Deck is going to have great performance for the types of games that I like to play, which are mostly indies.
You know, I kind of exposed how sheltered I am from the indie scene earlier when we talked about Assassin's Creed Shadows or whatever, but like, I just don't play those kind of
games.
I play indies and that's what it's great for.
Yeah, I played monthly indies too.
Yeah, but honestly man, I think Valve would be remiss to not give it a significant...
I mean, come on, Valve has been saying that they want a significant bump in performance for quite some time.
And I would have thought that, and know, RDNA 3.5, I would have thought that was a decent bump.
That's like a 50 % improvement over the deck, like, performance-wise, in theory.
But like, you know, I don't think Valve wants that.
I think Valve wants to go all the way.
I want to say same battery performance, but 100 % better performance.
Like, that'd be like, yeah.
Ryzen 9 AI chip that I used, that thing has amazing performance compared to the Steam Deck.
you know, running the game, running games at the same resolution as the Steam Deck, it's like two or three times as fast.
Dude, like...
Yeah, you run like the Tomb Raider benchmark, Raider Shadow Tomb Raider, and it's like 30 FPS, maybe 40 sometimes.
This can get like 60 to 90 FPS.
I have the the Minis Forum AIX1.
Yeah.
forgot they I thought you had the Asus Flow X13 that everyone was raving about
No, I don't.
We're getting there.
I kind of wish that Valve would upgrade it every three to four years.
That's just my opinion though.
like Gardner said, and I've seen a lot of people say this online, that they complain, well, if they do that, then it's gonna, you know, why?
It's gonna make the Steam Deck obsolete.
like, it can still play games.
The whole point in the PC world, the whole point is,
we get generational changes a little bit quicker than like consoles.
And I like that.
I like getting GPU, like the option to upgrade my GPU every two years if I want to.
I like that.
At least that's how it used to be.
Nowadays it's, you get to upgrade it whenever, you know, you can upgrade to the older generation when the newer generation comes out, cause you can finally find the older
generation.
But I, I like the idea that if I want to upgrade, cause I can play this one game, I can buy,
the device to do it.
I think that Valve's going to announce the next Steam Deck by the end of the year.
And I think we'll probably see it early next year.
I think so too.
I'm hoping, or at least some device that they've been working on, because they have three or four devices they've working on.
did.
And they also need to release it in every region in the world, and they need to release it at retail everywhere.
That's what I think.
the world's going to ex- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, what's left, though?
So they did Asia, Austria, Africa, South America, too.
That's a good one, too.
yeah, Africa and South America I think are what's left.
And that is, it's just a supplier slash, it just takes a lot to get everything set up for this.
shipping consoles like Brazil, like South America and stuff.
know that can be really expensive.
And I've heard stories about like how the PS2 was like 2000 USD there in Brazil or something like that.
I don't know anything about shipping consoles in Africa though, to be honest.
Yeah, South Africa, especially specifically too.
I think they'll get there, but I don't know.
I think they're already like I'd like to see them ship more to uncover every aspect, but I'm not going to to expect Steam Deck 2 to be everywhere.
just where I only expect Steam Deck 2 to go where it's already available, including Australia.
But.
What Valve also needs to do
and that they've been slacking on.
Nvidia's had a team up, I believe, with some modders or something like that.
You guys can maybe correct me on this, but the Half-Life 2 needs an RTX version because ray tracing is the future.
And I know how you guys feel about this, and so I had to do it this way.
This demo is very interesting.
I don't know if you guys have played it, have you?
I've played it.
I have not.
I played it with my 3090.
If you want the best experience, need probably a 5080 to a 5090.
This is ridiculous, but I'm not kidding.
They do get the best performance to whatever their scaling is.
That being said, I actually really like the textures in it.
The actual RTX or the ray tracing that is, the actual ray tracing is very, very bright.
Let's just say that.
It starts in Ravenholm.
Is it Ravenholm?
Yeah, Ravenholm.
movie where there's like lens flares everywhere?
Not quite.
one because when Half-Life 2 came out, I think they were doing lens flares practices.
That's but that's the point.
It is in fact, I'm gonna share my screen because this is a topic that's near and dear.
It's Half-Life.
I'm gonna share my screen.
So you can see RTX on and off.
Now if it looked like this more like this, I don't know if you can see my cursor now you can.
If it looked like the RTX one more, I'd be like, okay, cool.
I wonder if this will actually, okay, cool.
But you can see how it blows out the lighting just a little too much.
Like the lumens on that light that they're showing is just too high.
It wouldn't be like that, I think, in the real world.
Plus the whole world itself is a little too bright as opposed to the original where it's a little darker, at least even in the original, I guess it's a little too light, but yeah.
I don't know, what do you guys think about this?
I have a lot to say.
I don't, I literally don't understand ray tracing.
Like, I mean, I get like that it simplifies the rendering pipeline for developers, but I think that I don't, just don't get like the cost of performance.
But like there's diminishing returns right off the bat when you enable RTX.
And I just don't understand it.
I'd rather be playing this game at 380 FPS on my Steam Deck than playing it at 20 FPS on my desktop.
know?
And I mean, sometimes it was like legitimately sometimes it was like in the 40s, but most of the time it felt like it was in the 20s for me.
Like it was, and I have a 3080, which.
You it's not the optimum thing.
You need at least like the 4000 series to do it, but...
Okay, so it was a demo, to be fair.
So it's not fully out yet.
it was like, think of it as an alpha of the demo because, and you guys can go watch my stream if you want, whoever's listening or high tech and Gardner, you can see the second
portion.
So there's two chapters that are available.
The second chapter is whited out, is a white out.
Like half the textures are missing and didn't render properly.
Mm.
playing through a white world.
if you know how Valve's orange, they have a placeholder for textures and models with orange.
It was like that, but just white.
So it was interesting.
It was very bizarre.
Very much early.
I'm hoping that they kind of tackled the performance, but I think this is supposed to be a show-off demo of NVIDIA's.
tech right so they're pushing as hard as they can with some of the like some of the lighting is very impressive someone's just overblown like I said I think this lighting is
too much
There's, I was, right when you enter Ravenholm, you go into that like courtyard area and there's the pair of legs that's just swinging from a branch or something.
And like, I walked up to those legs and I just watched them swing as, and I watched the shadow on the ground.
And the shadow was just this huge blob.
It was just amorphous.
It didn't look like,
Like the kind of shadow I would expect from a floodlight like that was projecting the shadow and and it also wasn't like that stark kind of like Inky black shadow that occludes
all the light coming from the the one light source And I was just like I just don't get it like I don't understand why Like it didn't look like a real shadow to me.
It just looked kind of meh
To be fair though, this is a mod made by obviously not Valve.
I would imagine Valve would do it.
It might be sponsored by Nvidia, but I don't even know if the modders are, are they actually getting paid though?
Okay.
which is part of NVIDIA.
So I feel like...
as they're getting paid, but still it is a mod.
It's a showcase.
I will say though, when you see spotlight lighting, I'm not impressed too much.
They need to tone that down and it doesn't feel realistic.
It feels uncanny valley almost.
I will say though, the shadowing on the bricks and textures, I loved it in this.
Like you can see the shadow because what they did is that they AI enhanced the textures and then
improve the bump maps on them so that they actually feel even more like individual bricks.
And you can really see that.
And I think that's where it's impressive here.
But I think the bright lights that are detract from.
So I do feel like if Valve were to actually have done this themselves, that I think they would have taken it into more consideration.
They would have made the...
I don't know, they would have done a better job.
But this is not what I'm about.
I agree.
And this is a mod to showcase stuff.
So I like to give them a like, this is not the de facto playthrough experience.
Once once they finish this, I don't know.
I think Half-Life fans don't even like the remake like the Half-Life source version of Half-Life.
I don't know if you guys have played that one.
I like it.
It's the one I like a little bit more, but I am in the minority with Half-Life fans on this.
They are very vocal about
which Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are the de facto versions.
I don't think this is gonna be de facto, but I think I'm gonna have a fun time playing through this once they release it.
Hopefully they optimize it because I was getting like 40 or 50 frames on the recommended and mine was set at like a medium to high, and it could go up two or three more.
And I was on a 3090.
So, yeah.
know is that the game crashed every single time I launched it.
Yes, I'm playing on Linux, right?
And I never quit the game by actually using the Quit Game button.
Every time, I could play it, right?
But like...
Most of the time when I got into the game, as I walked through the first doorway where you walk out into the courtyard, the game would crash.
Every time.
I got past that a few times, and I never got beyond that hallway that's full of explosive barrels.
Because the game would crash there.
It was just so...
And sometimes it wouldn't even get into the proper main game, it would just get to the menu, I'd click play and it would crash.
That's interesting.
Yeah, I played it on Windows and it was great.
Except, okay, it was great in the first chapter, the second chapter, like I said, it was really bizarre.
And then on top of that, it did crash right before I finished the whole thing.
So it did crash.
So yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I think this is supposed to be free, like if you own Half-Life 2, right?
That's pretty cool.
It is cool and I love seeing stuff like this and I want to see more of it, but it definitely is, you know, it has some work to be done.
Yes.
So the lights look really cool.
That's the thing.
Like the ray tracing works really well in certain parts.
Like the tiling works.
I think this is fine, but it's too bright up here.
Like at the top of this, like the original looks better, like where it's darker in areas.
That's how it would look.
It wouldn't.
This looks like, I don't know, it looks too bright in areas.
I don't think this is proper.
So too bright right here too.
That's my problem is that it ruins the atmosphere of Half-Life and they need to really tone that in.
JJ Abrams, is that you?
my gosh.
Right.
But like the textures and some other parts do like look really good.
Like they did a good job I think in a lot of it and where other parts they didn't like the glowing of the eyes I think looks amazing compared to the original.
But once again Half Life 2 has been out what 20 years.
So
years at this point.
Yeah, and Half-Life 2 Anniversary's been out for about a year almost.
Something like, not a year.
But yeah.
I'd rather be playing that, honestly.
pretty cool.
I can run it at minimum settings.
I have a 3070.
Yeah, yep, the 5080 with DLSS on, Ultra 4K 140, that's what it can do.
And this is Half-Life 2, this is a highly optimized game that was able to run on potatoes.
Like literally, I think almost someone was almost powered their computer with a potato, it feels like at one point.
So yeah, we don't need to go much deeper into this, we really like.
I'll be trying to run this on the Steam Deck though.
I tried, it does not work in this latest.
I'm not surprised.
I'm just surprised you actually did it.
I'm surprised you actually tried it, Cardner.
Well, I had to.
like I want I was I did it.
I was intending on doing like a video review and then I just wrote an article on my blog about it because I didn't want to be like a complete misanthrope video.
And this game doesn't run well.
This is everything wrong with Nvidia and AAA games.
Ray tracing unoptimized PC port of Half Life 2.
No, I like I said, I thought it was good.
I think it's a mod.
So I did you even get a play at much Gardner?
No, I spent like two and a half hours trying and not getting very far in the game and having it crash every time.
So I was like, you know what, I'm done.
Nvidia needs to get their shit together on Linux drivers too.
I think that's...
yeah.
Honestly, a lot of it was probably the Linux driver part because like anytime I would open the RTX menu or whatever, it would crash.
Anytime I would like, if it actually like successfully opened the menu, if I tried to adjust anything, it would crash.
So it's probably partly the game and probably partly the drivers.
And maybe even the go between Proton and the Linux system drivers, who knows?
I'm not an expert on these things, not Valve, Nvidia needs to get their shit together.
God damn it, Nvidia.
want to promote RTX and have this demo and have it be a showcase, like have it work on everywhere.
That's a very impressive.
If you want like to impress people, have it work everywhere you have drivers, including Linux.
But this probably also goes to show that I don't know if actually many gamers use, know, ray tracing with their games on Linux.
So, Steam accounted for more than half.
of all Monster Hunter Wild sells in the US.
That is interesting.
yeah, Monster Hunter's big on Steam, huh?
It is.
People have been clamoring for Monster Hunter on PC for years and then Monster Hunter World came out on Steam.
It blew up expectations.
It also killed Dotless, which I think Dotless' main gimmick was, it's Monster Hunter on PC and now no one wants to play it because Monster Hunter's on PC.
Monster Hunter is a very interesting series.
It's fun, but I'd rather be playing anything else unless I'm on the go.
Like this is a fun game on the go.
Like for me personally.
And I wish they would have spent more time like Assassin's Creed to optimize it for the Steam Deck.
think so too yeah I don't know man it seems like I'm not sure if it's Capcom's engine because they use an in-house engine they use a RE engine and you know generally you know
Resident Evil 4 runs an RE engine but it's also not an open world game whereas you know Dragon's Dogman 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds both don't run that well so I'm wondering if
maybe it just doesn't support it well not support it no what's the word I'm looking for
not as good.
If it's an open world game, if it has a lot of things going on in it, if it's loading a lot of stuff, the Steam Deck is going to be at a big disadvantage.
think that's, every handheld just struggles with open world.
Which makes sense.
When you don't have a controlled environment and you have so much more to load in if you're not loading in in a very specific way, you're just gonna get really bad
performance.
So that's, it's a win though.
Like I like seeing more and more stuff come to Steam and I like seeing a lot more people using Steam and using the PC.
means more goodness is gonna be coming our way hopefully.
And it's not gonna be, you we won't be forgotten anymore.
Like we're gonna have more more PlayStation exclusives and more and well, Xbox is always gonna be all their exclusives for our windows, so.
We did PC on top.
where we're eating good these days.
It makes sense more and more to just make a steam machine at home and just play off that.
did.
Yeah, so our last topic, Xbox's new interface mentions Steam.
I'm really curious how this is gonna work out.
So they have since removed this image from Microsoft's official website, but in a promotional image where it says opening a billion doors with Xbox and it shows all of
these Xboxes, including the, not including, but not limited to the Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, ROG Ally, MacBook, iPhone, and iPad.
There's a curious little, and a TV, there's a curious little screenshot.
There's a lot of filters.
One of the filter options is Steam.
Now, personal opinion, think this is Microsoft, you know, I think this is Microsoft remaking the Xbox app so that it like is an all-in-one launcher on PC.
You know, I think the GOG Galaxy on PC, I mean, I don't use it personally, but that does function as an all-in-one launcher.
And I think Xbox wants to do the same here too.
this is basically the Windows Vista games thing, do remember that?
Windows Vista, yeah, it, like, it would like scan your computer and find all the games you had installed and it would present them, but it's like in a controller driven UI.
And,
mode, this is Xbox's game mode.
They're working on it.
We know we've heard leaks and articles, I think, for the past month or two.
They are gearing up to it finally after how long, but this is, I think, their play, and this is how they're gonna be, everything's gonna be an Xbox kind of play.
And I think it's going to do well.
It is interesting that they have it on Mac.
like that looks like a MacBook and iPads and stuff.
I'm curious if that's gonna be native or just streaming.
I'm fine with streaming to a point, but having an all-inclusive UI like this on a lot of different devices would be nice.
I just don't know if I trust Microsoft to keep at it over the years.
I would certainly trust Microcentrum for Google, that's for sure.
I...
Yeah...
don't trust Google.
Yeah, I don't trust Google at all anymore.
Like I am trying to get off almost every service I can at Google just because I don't know if they're going to take it away.
Microsoft.
Yeah.
I don't trust Google as far as I can throw them.
I have YouTube premium and I started seeing ads.
Like that's how awful Google is.
Anyway, I'm seeing them.
Yeah, here's the deal.
So this we have this steam filter, right?
I think that this
It makes sense for Microsoft to do this, but also I don't think that this is going to move the needle for Microsoft in any big way.
James, if you change to the next image, you can actually see the steam.
Yeah.
So.
If you click that, presumably, this is just a mock-up of the UI, but if you were to click that button, it would just show you your Steam games.
Would you be able to purchase games through Steam and through this built-in launcher?
I doubt it.
If you wanted to buy a game, it would present you with the purchases through the Microsoft Store or whatever.
It's interesting though, because this is like the kind of anti-competitive, like monopolizing thing that Microsoft was sued for in the past, right?
Like they would...
that there was antitrust because they were like excluding other browsers in the operating system back in the 90s.
And this at least, you know, they're including Steam here, but if they're squeezing out the ability to buy games through Steam in their UI, I feel like this would be grounds for
another antitrust case.
Well, let's hope they're not doing that.
they're allow you to pop up.
If it's a game mode, hopefully they're allowing you to pop up the steam overlay or UI to purchase.
So if you guys recall, I forget who it was.
Was it Phil Spencer that mentioned something about being able to get Steam games and Epic games on your Xbox, like, hardwares?
I wonder if this is also related to that as well.
Because, I mean, if you go back to the first picture...
you see the mock-up with, notably, these Xbox consoles.
And it makes me wonder if maybe that's Valve's, I mean not Valve's, sorry, Microsoft's aim is.
Like you probably wouldn't be able to buy Steam games on your Xbox, but the ability to just have them there at all is, let's just say it's a little crazy.
It's nice and it will be interesting to see how they go about this.
I I'm like Gardner.
I'm a little not maybe not quite as skeptical, but I am still skeptical on this on.
How Microsoft is going to do it and how much they're going to support other like Steam, Epic Games, stuff like that.
But if this is a game launcher and I can launch up, let's say with my.
Asus Ally, ROJ Ally that is then, and have it be into this mode and still be able to get into Steam somehow and purchase things, but still have like a game mode, I'll be very
happy about this.
But I will still, I don't know.
I think this is gonna be nice, but I am skeptical and I don't want them to push out any other.
I don't wanna buy games on Microsoft, I'll be honest.
Like I'll use it for a Game Pass.
I do like Game Pass, but all my games are going to get bought through Steam or Epic Games Launcher, most likely, or maybe GOG.
don't know, but I don't want to fracture my game collection too much.
Yeah, the thing is, this is going to be littered with ads.
It's going to try, Microsoft's going to try their damnedest to prevent people from making purchases anywhere else except through this app.
And I just...
You know, the reason that I earlier said Valve should get the Steam Deck 2 out, you know, in early 2026 and in retail is because this, like, I don't trust, I don't think Microsoft
is competent enough to actually execute on the plan that they have here to squeeze out Steam, which that is their plan with this.
But it's still a huge threat.
And...
Even if Microsoft is incompetent, this can definitely have negative consequences.
I'm just curious how they would make money if they didn't do what you were saying.
Like, why would you be doing this unless you were trying to push them to buy from your market, unless they have some deal with Steam or whatever, then maybe, I'm curious, like,
I wanna see what the end game is, and I don't have a lot of faith that it's gonna be...
It's probably your data, let's be honest.
Maybe.
want, so PC gaming is kicking the ass of both consoles, right?
Like PC gaming is huge.
And Microsoft has an avenue to capitalize and even monopolize PC gaming.
They already are kind of monopolizing PC gaming.
Like Windows is 90 % or something of the Steam hardware survey, right?
So.
This is their attempt to embrace, extend, extinguish.
And that's been their motto for ages.
I definitely, hate that type of mentality.
Amazon does the same thing.
And we have a lot of laws that allow for this.
We really need to close some of the stuff up to help with anti-trust behavior, that is.
And so I am still curious though, and I'm hoping that at least the UI, like,
I could play some of my game pass easier on every device, including my Steam Deck.
I'm hoping they go that route.
I'm planning for them to not, but I'm hoping.
My hope is that I'm planning for them to go anti-trust and to get in trouble again.
Well, it'll take four years from now because, but yeah, we'll see.
Maybe that's their plan.
They're going to sneak it in right now so they can get it through.
Yeah, anything else?
Hi, tech.
Anything else you want to say about this topic?
nothing in particular though, if I did have to mention.
If I had to go about it, I would say that it's probably less actually playing the Steam versions of the game as much as it is just like reading what games you own, then you get
to play the Windows Store version of those games instead.
If, you know, they sell that game.
That's what I'm
That would be even more nefarious.
Yeah.
That's what I'm thinking, that's what's gonna happen.
It'll be interesting to see if that plays out because I'm not buying stuff on Windows Store.
Like after the couple of debacles of how they've dropped the ball on integrating games into Windows in the past, I don't want to do that.
I'll do Game Pass though.
Like I like Game Pass for trying games out and to do certain things.
I like it for that, but beyond that, I'm not gonna be buying my games through this.
Yeah, I mean, you just have to remember that like there are a few things here.
First of all, Microsoft is a publicly traded company, which means that they don't answer to you with a customer.
They answer to their shareholders.
The other thing is that Microsoft is one of the kings of insuredification.
And if you don't like the way Windows 11 is has been heading in the last few years or even like before at Windows 10, then
this UI might seem like, this is going to be great for my RG ally or whatever, but give it just two or three years, guys.
And you'll quickly realize that what starts out as a really nice, good alternative that fulfills your needs and functions the way you would want and expect will become riddled
with ads, even more than you find in Windows Explorer.
Yeah, it's insidified, right?
no longer, once they've captured the market, it no longer caters to the end user, it caters to making them as much money as possible and frustrating you just enough that
you'll pay a little bit extra to disable the ads.
And that's what insidification is.
Like it's just horrible.
I mean, I'm an exception maybe, that frustrates me out of the market of just using their stuff.
I mean, even Windows 11, I only use it when I have to, I dual boot.
like when I first installed Windows 11, I'm like, this is fine.
I know a lot of people didn't like it.
I'm like, this is fine.
But then they started adding all the AI stuff into it in such a way that I'm like, this is not intuitive.
At least with Apple, they added it in a way and you can opt in and all the like they they make it so that you have to opt in if you want it and it's background.
It's not in my face on my tab bar or anywhere else.
Like it's just I'm kind of just done with that shit.
And I am a little worried with this, too.
I do like options.
I don't want this to be the option that bumps out every other one else.
I'm just hoping it's another.
contender in the space.
But you got me more worried now, Gardner.
Thanks.
Sorry
Damn, Gardener, you've destroyed his hopes and dreams.
My hopes and dreams are gone, they're squashed.
Nah, I'm still interested, but you guys should also be interested in what we're gonna be doing next week because we're gonna be ending this now, right?
We good to end this?
We good to end this and we good to...
If you also like good stuff and not being inshittified, you should make sure to follow us.
Like we mentioned earlier, subscribe, follow, comment, do whatever you need to do so that you keep on listening to our unshitified version of game news, I guess.
I don't know.
Tech news?
Well, yeah, tech news.
With a little sprinkling of games and stuff in there.
Okay, guys, if there's anything else you want to mention.
Do it now or forever hold your peace.
I'm good.
good.
Okay, we're all good here.
We're gonna go enjoy our week and we'll see you guys next week.
So have a good one, everyone watching and listening.
Thank you guys.
Thanks for watching.
take care.
later.